TIME IS MOVING AT
A DIFFERENT PACE
BACK HOME:
LEAVING BEHIND
A VERSION OF US

Laisul Hoque

“Immigrants move to a new world and often get flagged for the failure to assimilate. They live and operate in their own social bubble consisting of people who left their homeland in or around the same time. They go on figuring out the new world with the images of their homeland preserved in the resins of their mind.” // HEADER PHOTO: Zareen Tasnim Bushra, 2021

---

nonfiction,  aug 23

    After two of her sons moved out, to reside in countries oceans apart, it became an unwritten rule to video call my mother every other day. Though it sounds a tad excessive, and I often fail at it, I understand where she is coming from. For a significant part of her adult life, she had us to take care of—and then all of a sudden we’re not there. And our absence is constantly reminded in the form of two empty rooms, study tables filled with books collecting dust, and beds primly kept—only to be used when family is visiting.

But then again, she was always the anxious kind, and I adopted that part of her from a very young age. When I was 5 and we were at the beach, my parents placed me on my grandmother’s lap, leaving me to go swimming in the bay. But I gripped onto their hands—I feared the ocean would take them, and I would never see them again.

I call my mother whenever I get the chance, but every time I do, I am greeted with reservation, followed by lectures of how often my brother calls and how her oldest son is forgetting her. After this, we can resume our regular catching-up. Those initial conversations, however, are rituals set in stone, regardless of how often I call her. It is almost as if time operates in different metrics back home.

When we spoke this week, admittedly it had been a long time, close to a week since my last call. The conversation was short, too. She called me when I was at work, repeatedly. I rejected the call the first few times, but picked up eventually, fearing an urgent matter. She called to tell me she was going up the country, visiting family in the village. I said, okay. We didn’t have the usual “you don't call enough” conversation. This time, she had an oddly concealed manner about her. “Won't you ask me what I have been up to?” What have you been up to? “I have been with the babies.” What babies? “Your cousins have babies.”

Everybody tells you you’re supposed to feel joy when you find out you’re an uncle. Joy didn’t come to me at first, and I felt guilty for that. My flatmate also recently became an uncle, and I asked him how he felt and he replied, “Relieved.” Because his sister had had complications with pregnancy before; he was doubly excited to see the newborn baby. I felt even more guilty.

I can barely afford to pay for myself, let alone afford for a family. The agenda of starting one appears nonetheless in the phone conversations with my mother. At first, it made me anxious, but I soon learned from my female friends how to deflect these questions and conversations—they have obviously had to develop this set of tools long before me.

I think about it, though: how it would be having children in my twenties, and how people go about doing it. By the time you’re in your forties, your children will be in their twenties—well-functioning, independent adults, ready to live their lives. And you would still be in a fruitful age—with finances sorted, societal requirements fulfilled—ready to embark on the life you’ve always pictured. You’d enjoy a healthy relationship with your children: you’d be closer to them in age, with a smaller generational gap between you.

But I don’t think this happened in the case of my parents. They are enjoying retirement now, with their children all moved out, and they are more anxious than ever. And the present version of me in my twenties is a fuck-up. This version of me gets overwhelmed with life sometimes, cries on the way to work, and gets embarrassed about crying in public.

Since that last video call, I’ve been thinking of my cousins. Thinking of evening rooftops hangouts, and how these few moments together were cut short. I think of all the times we didn't get to go out. “You can all hang out as much as you like when the exams are over,” said our parents. I think of all the times I had to say, “Yes mama, mami, chacha, chachi, they are over at ours. I am tutoring them for O Levels,” while I covered for their night outs—all those careful maneuvers only to be the first ones to leave a party—they had to go home on time, my name was on the line. Through it all, for all its worth, when we grow up and move out, we will get to live.

Exams after exams, college applications, studies, through moving out, through living, I held on to that promise. And then, when we go back, we will have our own freedom, use our own finances, and have our own autonomy. We can now fulfill our past promises. But my cousins now have kids, and they’ll have to go home in time, before the babysitter leaves. Then soon enough, we will become our parents, getting in-between promises. 

My British Bangali friends share with me their experience of Dhaka when they last visited with their parents. They say Dhaka is this, Dhaka is that, and I say, no Dhaka has always been this to me: I pull out my phone, open saved posts on Instagram: a little curation of somewhat-stylized images of rooftop hangouts, leaning against the kitchen wall, waiting for mother to finish cooking the neheri, basking in that aroma, endless commute, Dhaka traffic, mass crowd, lights, lights, and more lights—photographic stills that behemoth-ly scream my lived experience of Dhaka. Next time, come with me, I’ll show you.

Immigrants move to a new world and often get flagged for the failure to assimilate. They live and operate in their own social bubble consisting of people who left their homeland in or around the same time. They go on figuring out the new world with the images of their homeland preserved in the resins of their mind. But time is ruthless, relentless, and moves on without you. And when they save up enough to go back home, they find themselves in a world equally foreign as the one they are a foreigner in. It sometimes feels like a betrayal, but you don't know who to blame. Sometimes you try to understand the happening. Sometimes you feel lost and anxious, so you double down on representing the version of home that made you who you are. You become its physical embodiment, because that version is now nowhere to be found.

Time is Moving at a Different Pace back Home: Leaving Behind a Version of Us
A curation of lived experiences by Laisul Hoque

Photos taken from the Instagrams of

Raisul Tintin @raisultintin
Sahela Akter Umama @sahelaakterumama
Zunayed Noor @zunayed
Ummid Ashraf @oomidashraf
Tahia Farhin Haque @tahiafarhin
Ragheeb Moazzem @robindronath

AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO